Michael Luongo paints a BA canvas in today's Irish Times. Photograph: Chad Ehlers/PC/Getty

“The elevator stammered at 14, but I could already hear the sultry, tinny, 1930s tango music above me, and I ran the final two flights up the rounded patio staircase, the music growing louder with each step. The sun would soon be reaching its golden moment, silhouetting the bronze dome of the Congreso building, three blocks away.”

Wow..some writers just know how to paint a canvas with their word selection. Perhaps that’s why Frommer’s chose Michael Luongo to write the Frommer’s Buenos Aires Guidebook which, according to the author, is “the best selling U.S. published guide to Buenos Aires and is purchased by about 1 out of 10 Americans heading to the Argentine capital.”

In today’s Irish Times, Luongo describes the BA transformation he has witnessed first-hand since the 2001 peso crisis, “Overnight a high-priced, at least for Latin America, destination, where the dollar and the peso were equal, became a destination with 65 per cent off. By 2003 the boom was evident, first with Argentinians holidaying at home and, later, with European, North American and Brazilian tourists arriving.”

For more information and beautiful descriptions of life in BA, enjoy the Irish Times article or, better yet, just buy the Frommer’s Buenos Aires Guidebook here.